February 2015

What’s going on in QuadWorld? For me, this has been a slow month for aerial videography. In other words, ‘I need something compelling to film”. It’s cold, trees are bare, there is no snow and I am going to lose weight again.

As for my blog, I am going to spend some time and words on the hot topic of ‘scratch building quads’. A friend (Professor Scratcher) on Whidbey Island decided a while back to build a quad from basically HobbyKing parts. His first attempt was to build a V-Tail. That bird flew as well as the Tri-copters that our old friend Nathan and I attempted many moons ago. Like the V-Tail, our Tricopters never performed beyond the ‘hard landing’ stage. But there are some great lessons learned for us DIY radio controllers. Professor Scratcher current project, a Heavy Ass Lifter has risen from the ashes a few times but looks to be a promising aerial camera platform. http://willywailerproductions.blogspot.com/

On the broader quad front, this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas was themed “Internet of Things” and all the quad folks showed up PowerPoint slides or Crowd Sourcing forms for ‘investors’ to fill out and just a few companies had real quads to show off. At a keynote event Tuesday afternoon, Intel's chief executive Brian Krzanich unveiled Nixie, http://flynixie.com a wristband that transforms into a selfie-snapping flying camera drone.

For us photographers, Krzanich also showed off the company's RealSense https://www.youtube.com/user/IntelRealSensea very cool new 3D photo technology. Parrot showed off their BeeBob drone and the weird Jumping Summo that runs around on the ground with a video camera and SD card. http://www.parrot.com/usa/(I have one and my 20 month old grandson loves it.)

Hit of the show was the DJI Inspire http://www.dji.com/ with next gen stabilization, great 4K 360 degree video camera and an open OS for future app developers building aerial tools for construction and farming right now. Pleiades, is working on autonomous flight and collision avoidance http://pleiades.ca/That could be a game changer. HEXO+ is into great ‘follow-me’ quads but watch out for those trees. http://hexoplus.com/ Of course, you have to find something spectacular to do and that most likely ends up in the ER.